1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a hinge for hanging the free panel of a bipartite corner cabinet door on the panel that is hung to turn on the carcase supporting wall, consisting of two mounting parts each associated with the door panels, which can be turned by about 90 degrees, from the position wherein the door panels are held approximately at right angles to one another when the corner cabinet is closed, to a position substantially in parallel alignment when the corner cabinet door is open, one of the mounting parts having a hinge cup which can be fixed in one door panel and in which a multi-angled hinge arm which can be adjustably fastened to the other door panel is journaled at one end on a pivot pin provided in the hinge cup, and, in the area where the hinge arm is journaled in the hinge cup, a thrusting means is provided which urges the free panel to a position assuming an angle of slightly more than 900 relative to the first panel hinged on the carcase.
2. The Prior Art
Corner cabinets which fill the corner areas between two rows of built-in cabinets set at right angles to one another are used especially in built-in cabinet layouts intended for kitchens, both on floor cabinets and in wall-hung cabinets. The door closing the corner cabinet carcase is divided, on account of space requirements, into two panels, one of which is hung by conventional hinges--self-closing hinges as a rule--on a supporting wall of the cabinet carcase, while the second, free panel is hinged in turn on the first panel hung on the carcase such that when the door is closed it will be at right angles to the first panel, but after the cabinet is opened it can be swung to a position aligned approximately parallel with the first panel. To hinge the two panels together, so-called piano hinges were originally used, which have the disadvantage, however, that no catch mechanism nor any overdraw restraint can be integrated into them to hold the free panel pressed against the associated part of the carcase in the closed state of the door. Even when the carcase-mounted panel was hung on the carcase with normal over-center hinges, the free door panel then had to be held closed by a separate catch mechanism, a magnetic catch for example. Since such catch mechanisms separate from the hinge mechanism have components to be attached to the carcase, which are visible when the door is open, and which impair the appearance of the (open) corner cabinet and can interfere with access to them, special corner cabinet hinges (DE-OS 37 29 531) have been developed, in which the hinge members turning on one another are coupled by an elongated strap or strip-like connector which is articulated on the one hinge member and slides lengthwise on the other hinge member, wherein the connector is not only part of a catch mechanism but also works as an over-draw restraint which prevents the panels from turning relative to one another beyond a certain angular limit.
One problem of corner cabinet hinges is also that the thickness of the door panels to be coupled together by the corner cabinet hinges varies between, say, 16 and 22 millimeters. Since corner cabinets amount to only a small percentage of kitchen cabinet plans, such corner cabinet hinges are needed relatively rarely, so that due to their complex construction and short production runs in comparison to ordinary cabinet hinges they are sometimes relatively expensive. If corner cabinet hinges of different dimensions would have to be used for door panels of various thickness, this would result in a still further increase in cost. Corner cabinet hinges must therefore be designed so that they will be usable for door panels within the material thickness range in question, i.e., they must be adjustable to the thickness of the panels. Due to the special motion requirements in corner cabinet doors, the adjustability between the hinge arm and the mounting plate in standard hinges does not, as a rule, suffice to cover the entire range of door panels of different thickness by the adjustment of the hinge. Therefore corner cabinet hinges of the kind described above have already been developed (EP-OS 0 463 439) in which the angular hinge arm is additionally divided into sections which are adjustable with respect to one another. The combination of possible adjustments of the hinge arm on a mounting plate and of the arm sections relative to one another then makes it possible to use the same corner cabinet hinge for hanging doors of different thickness.